Richard Ayoade’s ‘The Double’ Takes a Second Look at the Doppelganger

Although the doppelganger has a mythological role in film and literature, the British director Richard Ayoade felt he could bring something fresh to his interpretation of the theme.

In “The Double,” which opens Friday in New York, Jesse Eisenberg plays Simon James, a feckless employee of a bureaucratic organization. He seems like a born loser, ignored by his boss (Wallace Shawn) and unappreciated by the co-worker (Mia Wasikowska) he spies from his apartment window every night. His plight worsens with the arrival of James Simon (also played by Mr. Eisenberg), a conniving, hyper-confident version of himself who begins to realize all of Simon’s dreams.

“I loved the idea of this person who is so meek they’re invisible,” said Mr. Ayoade, a British actor and comedian who won notice with his 2010 directorial debut “Submarine,” an offbeat coming-of-age drama. His introduction to “The Double” came through a draft of the screenplay, written by Avi Korine (younger brother of “Spring Breakers” director Harmony Korine).

“No one notices when the double appears,” Mr. Ayoade said. “It’s completely unexpected and brilliant, very funny and sad and slightly frightening.”

He found more than comic potential in the notion of putting two Eisenbergs side-by-side and playing it straight. He tapped into a realm articulated by everyone from Carl Jung to David Lynch.

“It made it more interior than usual,” he said. “More gothic. It pushed it into modern psychological territory.”

The two characters also evolved through Mr. Eisenberg’s input. “What worked best dramatically, comically and emotionally was that the doppelganger’s behavior is almost cosmically created to humiliate, inconvenience, annoy or terrorize the protagonist,” said the actor, who appreciated Mr. Ayoade’s perspective on comedy. “He was always insistent on the characters having a real emotional experience, and that the humor would naturally manifest out of that.”

Rather than establish the personalities of his characters through outward physical shtick, Mr. Eisenberg was led to a more complex performance that required him to evoke their contrasts from inside-out. “He’s able to play very different characters without feeling like he’s not being himself,” Mr. Ayoade said. “Historically, we thought Dustin Hoffman or Jack Lemmon would be the actors to do that. You can see Jesse in [the Lemmon role in] ‘The Apartment.’”

The director also found Mr. Eisenberg was a good match for his fast-moving dialogue, a trait the actor displayed in his mastery of Aaron Sorkin’s speedy script for “The Social Network.” “I love Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks,” said Mr. Ayoade, nodding to two of Hollywood’s comic masters. “I know people don’t ordinarily speak that fast, but there’s a rush from that intensity of information that makes it feel better emotionally.”

He remains sensitive to his own cinematic doubles. Critics likened “Submarine” to Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore,” for example, although Mr. Ayoade said he hadn’t seen it at the time. He was happy, though, to express kinship.

“With someone like Wes Anderson, the thing he gets is that he’s more interested in the wallpaper than the characters, which I think is completely untrue,” Mr. Ayoade said. “I don’t feel there are many people more interested in characters than him, but he uses all of the frame to communicate something. You’re so unused to anything other than the star communicating something that it’s almost dissonant when anyone bothers to art direct anymore.”

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